1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an electro-optical apparatus including an organic EL (electro luminescent) element, a liquid crystal or the like, a driving method thereof and an electronic device.
2. Related Art
An electro-optical apparatus including an organic EL element or the like as an electro-optical element is provided in the related art. In the electro-optical apparatus, a variety of driving circuits is provided for supplying a predetermined electric current or voltage to the organic EL element or the like. Such a driving circuit may include, for example, a capacitor element which is connected in parallel with the organic EL element, in addition to the organic EL element. In this case, a data electric potential is supplied to a positive electrode of the organic EL element and one electrode of the capacitor element, and a reference electric potential is supplied to a negative electrode of the organic EL element and the other electrode of the capacitor element. According to this configuration, the supply of electric current due to electric charges, which correspond to the data electric potential, and which are stored in the capacitor element, may be performed with respect to the organic EL element, and thus, driving of the organic EL element can be stably performed.
Such an electro-optical apparatus is disclosed, for example, in JP-A-2000-122608.
However, in the above described electro-optical apparatus, there are the following problems. That is, in order to obtain a sufficient light emitting amount of the organic EL element (a time integral value of light emitting luminance), it is necessary to increase the amount of electric charges stored in the capacitor element. Thus, it is necessary to remarkably increase the capacitance of the capacitor element. However, since physical area for installation of each individual driving circuit is limited, it is difficult to realize such a large amount value.
Accordingly, in order to solve the problems, the present applicant has proposed a technology disclosed in U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2009/0195534. Here, a capacitor element included in each of a plurality of driving circuits (unit circuits) is used for driving one organic EL element. As a simple example, in the case where the driving circuits are simply arranged only in one column and they are is N in number (accordingly, the number of the capacitor elements and organic EL elements is also N), when driving any one organic EL element, firstly, charging according to a data electric potential corresponding to the organic EL element is concurrently performed with respect to N capacitor elements included in all the driving circuits, and then, concurrent discharging of the N capacitor elements (that is, electric current supply) is performed for the organic EL element.
With this configuration, there is hardly any trouble with respect to the above described problems.
However, the above described technology has room for improvement. That is, according to the above described examples, in order to drive any one organic EL element, concurrent charging with respect to all the N capacitor elements and concurrent discharging should be performed. However, time for sufficiently performing the concurrent charging and the concurrent discharging is likely to be relatively long. Accordingly, in order to secure the time for sufficiently performing the concurrent charging or the concurrent discharging, driving timing of each organic EL element becomes lengthened, or in order to maintain constant writing time and light emitting time (they correspond to the charging and discharging respectively), sufficient charging or discharging may not be performed. As a result, luminance irregularity or the like is generated.